Blog in Francehttp://www.bloginfrance.com
The fun and frustrations of expat life in FranceSun, 15 Feb 2015 18:16:44 +0000en-UShourly1BlogInFrancehttps://feedburner.google.comHow Not To Be Organisedhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BlogInFrance/~3/TZsmZRQoiL4/
http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/how-not-to-be-organised/#commentsSun, 15 Feb 2015 18:16:44 +0000http://www.bloginfrance.com/?p=7722It has to be said, the French aren’t very good at organising things. On what am I basing this generalisation? Last week!

Éléa brought us some lovely Bordeaux goodies

We had a stagiaire (work experience student) with us last week. Éléa came up from Bordeaux with her mum to spend five days finding out what it’s like running an élévage de lamas. Éléa, like all pupils in troisième, the last year at college, has to spend a week en stage. And it’s always round about the middle of February. Of all times to have it, this has to be the worst. For one thing, the weather is awful, which makes any outdoor stages miserable. For another, more crucially, many seasonal businesses are still shut – the camp sites, smaller hotels and B&Bs, and fine-weather activities. This means there are fewer places for the deluge of youngsters to find something to do. And that’s not easy. Éléa had contacted animal sanctuaries, a variety of farms and élévages, including thirty llama farms, like ours. Only I and one other farm replied. That had to be soul destroying for poor Éléa. To be honest, I did gently try to dissuade her since this being the quietest and most dismal time of year, there really is very little to do around the farm. And what there is generally isn’t much fun when the north wind is whistling and the rain or snow is falling. But Éléa was clearly very keen so I agreed to host her. Luckily she brought the sunshine with her and it was a fine week, although very cold in the mornings.

This time next year Rors will be looking for something to do for a week. I think we’d better start now in case he gets the kind of response rate Éléa did.

Surely the best time to have the stage would be late September. The stage has to be organised well in advance – all the official forms had to be filled three months before Éléa came – so the kids could sort out their stage at the end of the previous summer term. In September the weather is good so the kids wanting to do outdoors work aren’t frozen or soaked to death while they do it. Elévages have more going on, most likely some young animals still, and generally there’s all the extra starting-to-get-ready for winter jobs. Tourist attractions will still be open and there’s more choice for the students. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realise that, surely? However, it seems that schools have been doing the stage in February for umpty years and it’s just too much to expect a change, even for the most rational of reasons.

The second badly organised event last week was the journée portes ouvertes (open day) at Limoges Uni that Benj went to. He’s back to his studies in September so thought he’d pop down to get reading lists and speak to profs and make sure he’s all prepared. He’d hoped the health insurance bodies would be there with info, but no. He thought Crous, the organisation that deals with grants and accommodation would be open, seeing as it has a permanent office on campus, but no. And surely the admin office would be open to answer any general questions? Nope. He came out rather disillusioned. Caiti was the same after her visit to the jpo at the uni in Paris she was interested in a few years ago. She was anxious to find out about accommodation in the City of Light, but the Crous office there was shut too and we were helpfully told to come back during the week!

Come on, les mecs, put your thinking caps on. It really doesn’t take much thought to realise all these support services should be present and actually open on what are, after all, called ‘open days’! And again, like the stages they’re at the wrong time of year. Kids only have till the end of March to get their applications in for a place at uni, the jpos don’t start till January, so that doesn’t leave much time. The event is always on a Saturday and there are more universities in France than there are Saturdays during the open door season so there are plenty of jpo clashes. Instead of being able to visit all the universities or other educational institutes a youngster is interested in, they have to pick and choose. Plus the bad weather can get in the way. Caiti had wanted to go to Grenoble but we had to cancel our proposed trip since it was around minus 18 Celsius that particular weekend, snowy and frosty, so not the best weather to travelling to the alps in! These events need to be held during October, ideally during the half-term holidays, and into November i.e. pre-winter and before the application procedure opens.

So, two big occasions for youngsters that could be so very much better organised with a tiny bit of effort and sense.

I haven’t been able to find out how many copies of numbers 4 to 10 were sold (I’d need to subscribe to Livreshebdo for a year for a hefty sum to do that) but number 12 bestseller of 2014, Le suicide français (French Suicide) by Eric Zemmour sold 338,200 copies. So anything between roughly 340,000 and 550,000 apiece for those ten books.

I can use a couple of these books to illustrate how different covers for French and English editions can be in some cases. Out of our top 10, Green, James, Pancol and Musso have the same cover design, and the Girard/Aldine title hasn’t made it into English yet. But for Trierweiler and Dicker, the covers are quite distinct. The French Trierweiler is above. So here’s the English language edition cover.

Definitely a lot more interesting-looking.

And here is the French Harry Quebert:

Not the worst, but rather a lot of white. And here’s the English:

Heaps more modern. French book covers, at least for adult fiction, do tend to send you to sleep. Time to liven up I think.

Back to our bestsellers. Out of the top 50 bestsellers, 39 were fiction including a good number of ‘livres d’évasion’ (escapist) and even, heavens help us, some humour titles! This apparently corresponds with the modern French desire to ‘se changer les idées’, change their attitudes, according to the list’s compiler GfK. Readers vote for, and I quote, “les feel good books” – some nice franglais for you there!

Total sales of the Top 50 books came to 13.3 million books and 174 million euros (thus giving an average sales price of €13.08), accounting respectively for 4,5 % and 5,2 % of the total book market for the year.

Generally, book sales in France via bookshops (in store and online) in 2014 fell by 1.4% overall from 2013, and by 3.7% for the largest independent bookshops, according to Sebastien Rouault, head of the book department at GfK, a market research firm in Paris. However, a few bookshops saw increased sales, such as Le Comptoir des Mots bookshop in Paris, whose sales were up by 5%. The owner thinks that defectors from Amazon were one reason for the increase.

And to finish on a writerly note, today sees literary magazine, Magazine Littéraire (what else!) take a new more colourful and livelier format. . That sounds rather like what the French book scene is doing.

The 2015 recensement – census – is underway in France. It got going on 15th January (finishing 14th Feb for smaller communes 7,000 inhabitants) and a week or so later for larger places. The census is an ongoing affair in France, with certain parts of the country done each year and the whole nation covered within five years. For example, Nouzerines is being on a five-yearly-cycle that includes 2015, whereas our neighbouring commune in Creuse, Bussière St Georges, had its most recent census last year, 2014.

We’re being censused for the second time since living in France, the last one being in 2010. This year, we can do it online. The agent has given us the necessary codes and all we have to do is log in and get busy answering the questions. The website is at le-recensement-et-moi.fr which gives general information on what the census is all about and why it’s necessary, and you can see all the findings from previous years.

In honour of this year’s recensement, we got a house number! This was part of the rather splendid-sounding numérotation (numbering) of the houses in the commune. There’s only us living here at Les Fragnes, but we’re now 1 Les Fragnes.

Last time the census was taken there were 247 people in our commune of Nouzerines, with an extra 3 comptée à part i.e. second-homers. The population of France at 1 January 2015 was 66.32 millions. Dipping into a few more facts and figures, there are now 1.7 million families with 3 or more children (what’s called a famille nombreuse), and these account for 1 in 5 of French families. Families with an immigrant as the head of it are generally the largest, with their children tending to conform to the national average and having smaller families themselves.

Poor old Creuse continues to lose population. It was down to 120,156 in 2014 from 121,517 in 2012, and Limousin as a region (consists of Creuse, Corrèze and Haute Vienne) is down by a little over 3,000 to 735,889 in the same period. Between 1999 and 2011 Limousin’s population had increased by an amazing 27,000 (almost exclusively in Haute Vienne) but it’s falling again.

Well, I’ve taken a short break from writing this and filled in the census forms. It took about twenty minutes so not too onerous. So we’re all officially accounted for until 2020. Actually, it’s not so much stand up and be counted as sit down at your computer and count yourself!

]]>http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/stand-up-and-be-counted-2015-census-in-france/feed/0http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/stand-up-and-be-counted-2015-census-in-france/2015 Surreal Conversations: No. 1http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BlogInFrance/~3/1t6Buows8ms/
http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/2015-surreal-conversations-no-1/#commentsFri, 16 Jan 2015 18:49:38 +0000http://www.bloginfrance.com/?p=7699Surreal conversations are a way of life for expats. You suddenly find yourself being washed down a river of total incomprehension.

That happened to me today, but this one wasn’t of my making – for a change!

I was at the pharmacy buying some French Lemsip equivalent (not quite the same thing and with at least 500% less sugar) from one of the assistants, when the boss bustled in. I suddenly became aware he’d fixed me with his gimlet eye.

The following conversation takes place in French, and with a lot of puzzlement on my part.

“Did you find the box?” he demanded.

“Box?”

My brain, rather slow after a week of its owner suffering from a nasty virus, was still slowly cranking into gear so the echo was automatic.

“Yes. I brought it round at midday.”

“Midday?”

Still cranking.

“There was no one there, just the two dogs. I left it on the small table in the living room.”

“?????”

Cranking complete but I was at the ‘does not compute’ stage. No, at the ‘totally does not compute’ stage. The quandaries were as follows:

Why on earth should the pharmacist be delivering me a box in the first place?

We were all in the house at midday or thereabouts.

Yes, we have two dogs, but only one of them was outside this morning. Nessie was indoors and Tobi was pottering around in the garden. If anyone had appeared who, for whatever reason we didn’t notice, Tobi, who is not at all brave, would have begun her ‘somebody, help me!’ barking.

Even if, by some remote possibility, the guy had snuck in with a totally unforeseen and unexplained delivery and left it in the gite, that is obviously an uninhabited building next to an obviously inhabited one, ie with lights on and smoke coming out of the chimney. Surely no one could be that dopey.

Or could they?

Finally, it clicked. Boss Man thought I was someone else. Now, I like to think I’m quite distinctive with my red hair in a part of the world where there are very few redheads, and my fondness for hippie trousers and bright colours, but perhaps all expats look alike to the natives!

Boss Man was still smiling expectantly at me, clearly proud of his philanthropic gesture. I gave the only reply I could, not having the language at my fingertips to explain all the above-listed mental processes I had been through in a succinct and coherent manner. Give me five minutes or so, and I’d have been more or less there, although mostly in words of one syllable and with a generous smattering of gesticulations.

“Um, thank you,” I muttered, slightly embarrassed at all the attention I was getting. Boussac is the sort of place where people have no qualms about openly listening in to other people’s conversations, and often joining in. At least half a dozen people were following our exchange, and no doubt rolling their eyes at the stupidity of the Eenglissh woman who hadn’t found the box that this kind man had gone to extraordinary lengths to deliver to her. Pfft, these foreigners.

I scuttled out of the pharmacy quickly, head down.

But I meant what I said, on behalf of whoever he thought I was. Clearly someone with two dogs and a small table in their living room who was expecting a visit from the pharmacist!

And yes, I did check in the gite when I got home, just in case, but no box was there. I can only hope that if/when the pharmacy boss realises I’m not the person he thought I was, he’ll cringe slightly!

]]>http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/2015-surreal-conversations-no-1/feed/0http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/2015-surreal-conversations-no-1/Day of Mourning in France – Journée de Deuilhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BlogInFrance/~3/2nxXPX9pvPA/
http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/day-of-mourning-in-france-journee-de-deuil/#commentsThu, 08 Jan 2015 08:10:48 +0000http://www.bloginfrance.com/?p=7693Yesterday, as you are no doubt aware, was a bad, sad day for France. An act of terrorism directed at the office of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine, has left twelve people dead and twenty-four injured, four of them severely. You can’t also have failed to notice that the message of Je suis Charlie has gone viral. It means simply “I am Charlie” signifies support for the freedom of expression, a basic right of any democratic state.

You’ll see copies of the messages from Obama and Queen Elizabeth, and many touching photos of support – the impromptu rassemblements that sprung up all over the country. More are organised for today. For example, the main town of Creuse, Guéret, has one at 12.30.

Today, in consequence, is a day of mourning. It was declared yesterday evening. I wasn’t sure if Rors would even have school today. Back in Ireland, there was a day of mourning on the day of Pope John-Paul’s funeral and all schools were shut. So I was busily surfing the net last night, trying to find out what today might entail. To mark this atrocity, flags will fly at half mast for three days and today there will be a minute’s silence at midday at all schools and other educational establishments, and also all places of public administration.

Days of mourning are not quite as restrictive as they once were. In 1974, after Président Georges Pompidou died, everything shut for the day. However, they remain a powerful symbol of a nation’s united grief and, in this case, outrage.

]]>http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/day-of-mourning-in-france-journee-de-deuil/feed/0http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/day-of-mourning-in-france-journee-de-deuil/French Schoolbooks Going Digital – Slowlyhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BlogInFrance/~3/NGhxagAqO6g/
http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/french-schoolbooks-going-digital-slowly/#commentsWed, 07 Jan 2015 09:32:07 +0000http://www.bloginfrance.com/?p=7687The use of digital textbooks in French schools has risen sharply in the last three years, according to a survey by TNS Sofres on behalf of school textbook publishers Savoir Lire. However, it seems that further growth is being hampered by a lack of funds to acquire hardware and content.

In 2011 16% of teachers surveyed said they used them at school as opposed to 29% in 2014. Most of this use is in secondary schools i.e. collèges and lycées. And thank goodness – when Benj and Caiti were at lycée, they had to cart a ridiculous amount of textbooks around with them. Expensive textbooks too, I might add. Ruadhri, at collège, has some hefty tomes as well, although he’s able to leave most in his locker at school, but some nights his bag weighs a ton when he has a couple of different subjects to do for homework.

Highest use of digital textbooks is in maths and physical sciences (46%), with literature trailing at 24%. That seems ludicrous since most of the set texts are classics and therefore out of copyright and so available for free as ebooks on many sites. Let’s save the poor parents a few euros.

Mind you, at present most digital usage is collective. Nearly a half of the pupils of these digital-savvy teachers access their digital textbooks via school computers or some sort of digital workplace. Only 7% of pupils have their own digital textbook.

French publishers are still trying to work out a digital content programme. In 2012 they saw government spending on lower secondary school textbooks slashed from €300m to €60m. That explains why Rors’ books, all provided by the school, are starting to look rather tatty. Publishers won’t be bringing out quite so many new editions. It had actually got a little crazy a few years ago. Benj and Caiti were only a year apart at lycée, but a few of Benj’s books had been revised so that we couldn’t pass those on to Caiti. (At that time parents bought the books, although there was a means of renting them and also there was an allowance of €90 per pupil in our region, Limousin, towards the cost, plus the rentrée scolaire to help meet costs. However, it wasn’t always enough.) But Caiti’s year were the last intake before a major overhaul of lycée courses, so her books couldn’t be passed on to anyone as they were now all defunct! Seems we’ve gone from one extreme to the other.

Quite what this e-éducation plan is, no one knows yet, other than it’s being one of 34 plans towards making a nouvelle france industrielle. Publishers are growing rather concerned since they need to be preparing whatever it is that’s going to be needed. They have a key role in developing digital textbooks and 82% of teachers have confidence in them to develop appropriate content for the curriculum. But they need to know what it is first! Politicians are currently wading through 40 propositions put before them by the Conseil national du numérique (CNNum) so, this being France, it could be nearer 2061 than 2016 when things get sorted out! We’ll have to wait and see.

]]>http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/french-schoolbooks-going-digital-slowly/feed/0http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/french-schoolbooks-going-digital-slowly/Turkey Tailshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BlogInFrance/~3/vXfSgAASIcY/
http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/turkey-tails/#commentsSun, 04 Jan 2015 17:49:29 +0000http://www.bloginfrance.com/?p=7684We don’t have as many turkeys as we did before Christmas – no surprise there – but we still have four: three blacks (two males, one female) and one white male.

For the last few days the two black males have been displaying non-stop. Well, they do stop occasionally to bicker, which for the first time involves slapping! We’ve never seen turkeys do that before. One of the males whacks the other one with his wing. It’s very funny to see! I haven’t managed to get it on camera or video yet, but I’ll keep trying. The fighting isn’t too violent, and we’ll be down to a breeding pair of blacks soon anyway.

When they display, the fluff out all their feathers and spread their tails. Their snood (the erctile, fleshy protuberance above the beak) extends and turns bright red, and so do the nodules on the neck. In contrast, the turkey’s head turns blue. The male will stamp his feet, and make a vibrating sound too. The photo doesn’t do full justice to the wonderfully bright red and blue shades that he summons up to impress the lady turkey, who sadly doesn’t seem to notice.

Here are the two males, mid-gobble! Any loud or sudden sound makes them gobble at the moment.

Père Noël brought me a book about heritage turkeys ie old-fashioned turkeys. Blacks and bronzes (what they call grises) are heritage breeds in that they are slow growers. I have my eye, as I’ve mentioned before, on some Ardennes Rouges, which are brown and white. Very handsome. Père Noël had tried to get me some heritage turkey eggs to hatch, but his plans were thwarted. Never mind, maybe the Easter Bunny will be able to get me some in the spring!

And to finish, not a turkey but a duck. Our white duck flew up onto our very high barn roof earlier today. We have no idea why! Perhaps she just fancied seeing what the view was like from up there.

]]>http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/turkey-tails/feed/0http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/turkey-tails/High Speed Holidayshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BlogInFrance/~3/vKGp4sah5uI/
http://www.bloginfrance.com/2015/high-speed-holidays/#commentsSat, 03 Jan 2015 19:46:50 +0000http://www.bloginfrance.com/?p=7668These have to have been the fastest holidays ever. It really only seems like five minutes since we were collecting Caiti from Chateauroux station, but this evening I dropped her back there for her return journey to Canada. It hasn’t started smoothly. SNCF have decided to be awkward and introduced a ‘mouvement social’ (kind of solidarity industrial action as far as I can make out) 2-5 January to obviously inconvenience as many inoffensive people as possible – mainly students going back to uni/lycee and holiday visitors. Caiti’s original train was affected so she had to change to a later one. That one was packed so poor Caits had to stand in the corridor for two hours to get to Paris.

Rors’ two weeks of school hols are nearly over and we’ll soon be back in the usual term-time routines. Accompanying Rors to and from the school bus in the dark every morning and evening isn’t much fun, but at least the days are slowly lengthening now. We might not need to take the torch with us in a few weeks’ time.

The weather hasn’t been great so we didn’t do as much walking and geocaching as we usually do during school holidays but we managed a few outings. We had a really lovely food-filled Christmas, complete with a wonderful selection of Canadia treats from Cait and some truly delicious Swiss chocolate from author/friend Paul, and a peaceful New Year – well, the latter for four of us anyway. Benj went up to Paris to join in the jubilant celebrations there on New Year’s Eve.

The rest of us went for a walk around Etang des Landes on New Year’s Day, one of our traditional winter walks. The lake was frozen this time, but it was a beautiful sunny day, if chilly.

And since yesterday, 2nd Jan, was forecast to be nice in the morning, Chris, Rors and I set off for a quick geocaching session in the Gorges de Vouieze, not too far away. It was a lovely walk through the deep gorge next to an energetic river.

And there were interesting things to see…

An abandoned traction engine

A disused lorry and factory

And Bluebeard’s Castle!

Rors told us the legend of Bluebeard. Apparently Bluebeard got married but had to go away on business. So he left his new wife in his castle. He gave her the keys, but told her to never go into one particular room. But of course she did, and found the bodies of all Bluebeard’s previous wives. And there was blood on the door handle, which was magical blood which could not be washed off. Bluebeard’s wife tried everything to get it off her hands but with no luck. So when Mr B got home, he knew she’d disobeyed him and he sentenced her to death. Fortunately her mother/cousin/brother (Rors was a little vague as to which relative it was exactly) was due to visit and Mrs B played for time by saying a lot of final prayers until her family member arrived and rescued her. So now you know!

We’re now into the Twelve Days of Christmas – les jours festifs. Opinion seems pretty evenly divided as to whether these start on Christmas Day itself, what I’d always believed, or on Boxing Day. Here in France they tend towards the latter, so that the twelfth day is also Epiphany (6th January).

These really are the dark days of the year. The shortest day is over with the winter solstice on 21st December but there’s no obvious sign of the days getting longer yet. So it’s all pretty dreary. To try and cheer them up, over the years people have embued them with a sense of omen and mystery. The French came to believe that the weather on each of these twelve days reflected what you’d get in each month. So the weather on the first day of Christmas foretold what January would be like meteorologically, the second day February, and so on.

See what happens on the twelve days that come after Christmas, because the following twelve months will share their characteristics.

These magical twelve days have different names in various parts of France and its associated territories. In Provence they’re called ‘Calendo’, in Berry (which we fall into) ‘épreuves’, in Lorraine ‘les douze petits mois’ and in Québec in Canada ‘journaux’.
And everyone knows the rhyme associated with the twelve days of Christmas. It originates from 1780 and was first set to music in 1842 by James O. Halliwell.

But what exactly is the song all about, with its abundance of birds and increasingly ridiculous presents! Well, it can be taken at face value and we can all be grateful that we don’t have this generous but presumably mentally unstable true love ourselves! Or, each day’s gift can be seen to designate an aspect of religious teaching. Under this interpretation, ‘my true love’ is Jesus, and as for the others:

Three genuinely French hens!

the partridge in a tree is Jesus on the cross

the two doves are the Old and New Testaments

the three hens are faith, hope and love

the four calling birds (songbirds) are Matthew, Luke, Mark and John who wrote the gospels

the five golden rings represent the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Book of Numbers, Deuteronomy

the six geese laying are the six days of creation (Monday to Saturday, Sunday being reserved as a rest day)

the seven swans swimming are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, fear of the Lord and piety. But, apparently, they could also symbolize the seven deadly sins of pride, avarice, envy, anger, gluttony, lust and sloth

the eight maids milking represent the eight beatitudes of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Elsewhere, the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes suggests that the gifts represent a list of different dishes or activities, each corresponding to a month of the year.

I’m not sure how convincing either argument is. Maybe there’s a bit of both involved, who knows. Or maybe it was always intended as just a fun, nonsense song to brighten up the twelve days of Christmas.